Ste. Annes' Hospital

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As a Canadian Army Veteran of World War Two, residing at Ste. Annes' Hospital, I have long been actively communicating and corresponding with many of my comrades and their family members, in campaigning for our our common cause...protecting and preserving the best interests and standards of care of our core community of some two hundred and fifty (and declining daily) vestigial Vets.

It is now only a few scant weeks away from the first anniversary of the date which witnessed the transfer of our once-fine facility from Federal to Provincial jurisdiction. Appropriately , thai took place on April Fool's Day of 2016, when we Veterans were fooled into thinking that we would not be made fools of by the platitudinous promises of Veterans Affairs Canada.

Time now to take a look at what the powers -that-be have wrongfully wrought, upon those of us who once fought when our country called.....In the course of filing some accumulated documents, I came across a signed letter from Minister of Veterans Affairs Kent Hehr, dated March 9, 2016, addressed to the daughter of a Veteran seeking admission to Ste. Anne's, just a few weeks before we were transferred, en bloc, to the misguided ministrations of Quebec's Health Department. In that letter, Kent Hehr wrote (in part) the following: .....

"The Government of Canada will ensure that each eligible Veteran will continue to have priority access to Ste. Anne's Hospital and receive outstanding care and services in his or her preferred official language . Under no circumstances will we compromise the level of care provided to Veterans who reside there.....(and) a transition committee has been established to oversee a seamless transfer of Ste. Anne's. To ensure that Hospital residents are formally represented during the transfer, a Veteran representative will sit on that committee."

Sad to say, on this first anniversary of Minister Hehr's proud proclamation, as well,as of the upcoming Apri1/16 actual transfer date), virtually every one of his words remain untrue and unfulfilled.....the much-vaunted "outstanding care and services" stand out, only because of having been decidedlyj degraded and diminished; the option of choice of communication in one's "preferred official language" is but a sheer chimera; "the level of care provided to the Veterans " has, indeed, been severely compromised, by the imposition of poorer Provincial policies, protocols and procedures; the transition committee, charged with overseeing "a seamless transfer", first met only months after the transfer had already taken place, and was then met with a transfer already coming apart at the seams; and the appointment of "a Veteran representative (to) sit on that committee" never materialized. So much for the Minister's false prophecies ....

I then came across a second signed letter from the Hon.Hehr, this one addressed to me, and dated October 12, 2016, well over six months after the transfer had been consummated, in which he wrote, (In part) as follows:....

"As you know, a transition committee has been established to ensure that the Veterans at Ste. Anne's continue to receive the same high standard of care in their preferred official language, as stipulated in the Transfer Agreement.....The committee is composed of a Veteran who resides at the Hospital and (other) representatives ..."

As in the first letter, these post-transfer cloned talking points from Hehr's boiler-plate playbook, are blatantly inaccurate and invalid and, since the transferred operation had, by then, been in operation for over half a year, were, in fact, measurably misleading misinformation. The "same high standard of care" has descended to a deteriorated degree, (after over forty percent of the original staff retired and/or resigned en masse on the very day of the transfer), ushering in deleterious Provincial policy positions, with particular regard to personnel practices, whereby cutting costs only converted to cutting care for the helpless and hapless Veterans. Nor were those very Veterans ever represented on the committee by "a Veteran who resides at the Hospital", contrary to the Minister's misspoken and misbegotten message.Redundantly and regrettably,regarding the provision of "care in their preferred official language, as stipulated in the Transfer Agreement", the extent to which numerous new employees (primarily orderlies, who are the life's blood of the daily services provided to the patients) speak any language other than French, is, at best, negligible, notwithstanding the fact thar about half of the Veterans are almost exclusively Anglophone, with the concomitant communication complications, in furnishing their care.

Then, just this week, on the virtual eve of our first Anniversary of morphing into a Provincial geriatric garage from our former status as a highly accredited long-term care provider, I was given yet a third letter, signed by the Minister and addressed to a family member of a Veteran at Ste. Anne's. This one is dated as recently as March 3, 2017, and reads almost exactly like a carbon copy of the first two letters cited above, (and, In all likelihood, numerous others churned out by his Xerox machine, set on "AUTO"), as hereunder quoted (in part):

"As you know, a transition committee has been established to ensure that the Veterans residing at Ste. Anne's continue to receive a high standard of care.... [My Note: no longer"outstanding care and services", nor "the same high standard", as described in the two previous letters]....in their preferred official language, as stipulated by the Transfer agreement. The committee is composed of a Veteran and (other) representatives...".

How much more disgracefully uncaring, uninterested and indifferent can this quintessential role model for the Peter Principle possibly be, than to blindly and blithely repeat the same hackneyed, and palpably untrue statements, to the Veterans (and their faithful family members) , time and time again, without even troubling himself (or his many minions) to check the factual evidence regarding the largely lowered level of care, plus that of the visibly non-Veteran composition of the transition committee, which he so loudly and lengthily lauds, let alone his multiplicity of other misleading "alternate facts" about the language choice, and so on, ad nauseam ?Does Minister "Can't Hear" think that because we are all so long in the tooth, we are also short in the brain , and that he can say or (not) do anything he wants, without crucial consequences ? Just repeating the "same-old/same-old" bald-faced and shameless untruths, over and over again, only makes them come to light, but not to life.

Moreover, even granting good intentions and moral motivations on the part of the Federal representatives on the transition committee, those can never compensate for its inherent inadequacy and impotence to exercise any measure of sanctions or leverage, to affect any truly effective measures of change or control, other than tabling suggestions and forwarding recommendations to the fox-in-the-henhouse Quebec authorities, who call the discordant tune, albeit Ottawa pays the piper, per diem/per patient.

In essence, Minister Hehr's own words (which, obviously don't count for much in the real world), clearly belie the real facts enshrouding the "new normal" at Ste. Anne's Hospital. Veterans Affairs Canada had publicly promulgated certain fundamental pledges to Ste. Anne's Veterans, as underlying conditions of transferring them to Quebec's devices, and it has patently violated those promises, seemingly designed only to allay the fears and insecurities of its former charges, but, perhaps, never really intended to be honoured. So much for the Minister's false statements.

What with the first (unhappy) anniversary of the infamous transfer looming large, this sad state of (Veterans) affairs is a most unwelcome commemoration, highlighting, as it does, our Government's deep disregard and distinct disrespect of the men and women who once sacrificed so very much, to ensure its very existence.In view of Herr Hehr's (highly paid, but egregiously executed) job performance to date, he deserves to be nominated for the first-ever "Minister of Veterans Affairs Condemnation Award", being blatantly unsuited to his position , much as he is unresponsive to our Veterans' needs.

I am well aware that this Vet's vent may not be deemed "politically correct", but I don't give two hoots in Hades about the 'political' part of that phrase....my only concern is with being 'correct'. We here, at Ste, Anne's, have been noticeably neglected, ignominiously ignored, and even, to an extent , betrayed by the incompetence and insouciance of the Minister of Veterans Affairs ....and I can no longer tolerate euphemisms to cloak that very verity.

Hehr might be here today, but he surely should be gone tomorrow, as the best possible gift to the beleaguered Veterans at Ste. Anne's , on this coming commemoration of April Fool's Day. That would well serve to make this Anniversary a little less unhappy, and, hopefully, bode a bit better for our brief and uncertain future.